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Dune Reboot Won't Draw from David Lynch's Adaptation

Director Denis Villeneuve claims his new take on Dune will be totally different from David Lynch’s 1984 movie. While Lynch is the celebrated filmmaker behind movies and television shows such as Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, Dune is often considered his weakest directorial effort.

With Dune the director had to condense Frank Herbert’s epic novel down to a 2-hour experience, but despite some stunning visuals, his adaptation is commonly regarded as a muddled mess. Lynch has since disowned the film, rarely speaking of it in interviews. The film was taken out of his hands by producers during editing, and the experience turned him away from working on big budget studio movies.

Acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve is now attached to a new adaptation - and in an interview with Yahoo!, he revealed his vision will have nothing to do with Lynch's. Villeneuve is a huge fan of Herbert’s novel and is currently working on the script for the forthcoming reboot:

“David Lynch did an adaptation in the ’80s that has some very strong qualities, I mean David Lynch is one of the best filmmakers alive, I have massive respect for him. But when I saw his adaptation I was impressed, but it was not what I had dreamed of, so I’m trying to make the adaptation of my dreams.

Instead, Villeneuve will be starting from scratch and drawing on the book as inspiration for how the movie will look:

“It will not have any link with the David Lynch movie. I’m going back to the book, and going to the images that came out when I read it.”

Villeneuve has had quite the creative run in recent years, directing acclaimed movies such as Arrival, Enemy and Sicario. While Villeneuve's sequel Blade Runner 2049 may have failed to impress at the box office, it was critically acclaimed and is considered a worthy follow-up to the classic original. While the director was apparently in the running for James Bond 25, it seems his commitment to Dune has ruled him out of the job.

While Villeneuve is undoubtedly a great choice, Dune has become a notoriously tricky project to adapt for the big screen. Before Villeneuve became attached, Peter Berg and Pierre Morel both spent years trying to get a new version made, and even prior to Lynch’s movie, filmmakers like Ridley Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky tried and failed to mount adaptations. Dune isn’t the easiest book to adapt given the amount of characters and scope of the story - but if any filmmaker can do it justice, it’s Villeneuve.